IDNs get on the fast track

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So with the “father of Internet” and chief Internet evangelist at Google, Vinton Cerf, chairing the latest IDNA working group and ICANN issuing a fast track PDF document, it appears that we’re really truly absolutely going to see IDNs come to light in 2009.

I think.

I first covered the “coming” of IDNs in 2000. Little did I know then that it would be such a long process.

Granted, IDNs already exist in the eyes of a number of registrars around the world. You can find an IDN registrar today on this list courtesy of Verisign.

But in the eyes of ICANN, IDNs aren’t yet official.

If you’re interested in the nitty gritty of what these ICANN-approved IDNs are going to look like, check out the fast track document. The document makes it clear that IDNs can only be derived from one script. In other words, we should see no mixing of, say, Latin and Cyrillic characters to create a bogus http://www.pаypal.com/ address (try the link out and see for yourself).

Countries that share a common official language will also need to work together to develop a consistent code table of accepted characters. I can see this being a particularly tricky process, depending on the countries involved.

But the good news here is that the number of obstacles appear to be decreasing in number. There are still some issues to be resolved — like how much money ICANN is going to expect for all this effort.

Will acquiring an IDN cost a registrar the same as a gTLD: $185,000?

Or will the fee be minimal in exchange for some type of revenue share based on registrations? All I do know is that there is demand for a fast-track process and the standards folks are now hashing out the final IDNA document.